Gatlinburg Part II: New Year's Eve and New Year's Day

New Year's Eve, we went to Dixie Stampede. It's a dinner and show type of thing. I loved it. The food wasn't anything amazing, and we had to eat with our hands (something I have never been fond of), but it was a lot of fun! It was definitely a different experience. 

It is SO hard to take a picture of Ivan without his eyes closed!

See what I mean? :)

They were still showing their Christmas show and I am so glad they were. My favorite part was the Nativity scene that they had. It was so real! They even had real camels for the 3 Wisemen. It was gorgeous. Wish I would've taken more pictures. 

My cornish hen! 

After, we rushed to Downtown Gatlinburg to await the new year. Gatlinburg has a teeny tiny ball drop from their tallest building. It was so great to start 2013 together with my family!

4th New Year's with this handsome guy. 

The next day, we went to Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. It was really nice. It's ranked #1 in the U.S. We had a ton of fun. It was also huge and there were so many fish to see!

Almost all the grandkids

There were so many huge sharks. 

Mami is a lot braver than I am. Bruce held it, too!

Gatlinburg Part I

So we flew to Miami, spent about 3 days there, and hopped into my mom's car to go to Gatlinburg Tennessee. My aunt was there with her family already. I couldn't wait to see them! 

Going on road trips with family is always fun, even when they're 14 hours long. I slept most of the time because I was getting seriously sick. I think all the germs in Idaho finally caught up to me. We were making good time on our trip and decided to stop at Cracker Barrel for dinner.

Don't mind my crazy Abuelo...

After dinner, we drove a couple of hours more before we realized something was up with the car. Blaine had heard a low whizzing noise but we thought nothing of it. Next thing you know, the power steering gave out. Luckily, we were close to an exit and made it to a gas station just before the whole car shut down. We were in middle of nowhere South Carolina around 8 o'clock at night with only 3 hours left on our trip. We didn't know what to do. Bruce and Blaine caught a ride with some random guy at the gas station to take them to an auto parts shop to get a new pump. We tried calling several mechanics to see if they could come help us, but it looked like we would have to wait for the next day for anything to happen. Thank goodness there was a McDonald's and a hotel right across the street from the gas station. 

Trying to get things figured out at McD's

Being broken down isn't that bad
when you're in great company :)

So the next day, we were lucky and had a mechanic work on the car even though it was Sunday. It took about 6 hours to fix, but finally we were on the road again. In the meanwhile, Ulises, Tia and the kids came down to accompany us and see what Ulises could help with (he's a mechanic). We arrived in Gatlinburg around 8:00 PM PM, just in time to get some food and watch the Redskins game. 

My favorite little sausage place in Downtown Gatlinburg.

This year, Tia and Ulises decided to change it up a bit and rent a cottage by the river instead of a cabin in the mountains. I loved it! It'd be even more gorgeous in the summer time. 

While we were there, we went to the Smokey Mountains National Park. 

There wasn't much snow, but Mami was determined to build a snowman. 

Abuelo being silly, as always. 

We hung out in the cottage quite a bit. The boys played billiards, we made s'mores (over the fireplace haha), and sad to say, we watched lots of Storage Wars together while drinking Mami's delicious hot chocolate. 

Our Trip to Miami Part I

Our trip to Miami was great. It was pretty long since BYU didn't start winter semester the first week of January how they usually do. The temperatures were in the 80s the entire time. Yup. We were in heaven. I was wearing sandals as much as I could and Blaine refused to wear anything other than shorts. 

Here are some of the things we did while we were in Miami: 

Mami greeted us at the airport with a box full of pastelitos de queso, carne, y guayaba y queso, croquetas, and rollitos de queso (Blaine's favorite)... and Iron Beer, too!

We went shopping at my favorite mall - Aventura mall. 

Blaine and Papo played 2k13 quite a bit...

We ate at Cuban Guys, Blaine's favorite little Cuban restaurant. 

Hmmm...mariquitas

We dropped Papo off at the airport :( I was sad that I only had a couple of days with him, but he had to go back to Houston to start off his first semester of college.

We ate at El Palacio de los Jugos (The Palace of Juices) several times. Blaine couldn't get enough of their juice! 

And we had Tio Colo's ice cream sandwiches for dessert... 

Blaine played with Monster and Ini more than usual. I think he was missing Rue a lot :) 

I loved seeing my Mom's Christmas tree. She did a sweet "Candyland" theme this year. Isn't it gorgeous? She is so good at decorating, especially for the holidays. She made half of the ornaments herself. 

My mom did whatever I wanted to my hair almost everyday. I am not good at styling my hair at all. So I took full advantage of my mom's talent and of all the cool hairstyles on my hair board on Pinterest :) I asked her to do a waterfall braid the first day I was there and she got out of hand and ended up doing this crazy thing on my head (pictured below). I asked her to do a french braid, high buns, up-dos, all kinds of braids, etc. I know that I'm 22 (almost 23) and should probably learn how to do this on myself, but come on, it's so much better when Mami does it! 

Larsen Bridal Shower & Wedding

The weekend after finals were over, I went to Amber's bridal shower. I helped with the decorations and putting it together. It was a really fun shower and it was great to get to know some of Amber's friends better. 

The Friday while we were in Idaho, we drove down to Salt Lake for Matt and Amber's wedding. Blaine was a groomsmen. We had to steal Aunt Jan's car, meet Kerri at Primary Children's, pick up our clothes for the wedding in the trunk of the car, change in the car and make it to the wedding. It was crazy. We barely made it in time! 

Amber was a gorgeous bride. I loved her dress! She had it made. So classy! 

Buds

The wedding was really nice. The company was great and the food was delicious. We sat next to Matt's aunt and uncle who were so cool. Apparently, he loves Cuba and can't wait to visit. He knew so much about the country, politics and culture for being from Brigham City Utah. It was impressive! We are so happy for Matt and Amber. After the wedding, they headed out to Dallas to start their new life together! Matt got a job with Comerica, a commercial bank. We are going to miss them a lot! Matt has been a great friend to Blaine. They've been study buddies and would hang out all the time. I hope we can visit them sometime too! We were so happy to be there on their special day.